With Walter Kintsch he contributed to the development of the psychology of text processing. Since the 1980s his work in CDA focused especially on the study of the discursive reproduction of racism by what he calls the 'symbolic elites' (politicians, journalists, scholars, writers), the study of news in the press, and on the theories of ideology and context.

He founded six international journals: Poetics, Text (now called Text & Talk), Discourse & Society, Discourse Studies, Discourse & Communication and the internet journal in Spanish Discurso & Sociedad, of which he still edits the last four.